This Man's Blood (part 1 of 2)

Look, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this Man’s blood upon us! – Acts 5:28b (NET)

The statement above was ostensibly provoked by the fact that “many miraculous signs and wonders came about among the people through the hands of the apostles” (5:12). In the very city in which Jesus was crucified, in which there would have been thousands of witnesses to the fact of His crucifixion, “More and more believers in the Lord were added to their number, crowds of both men and women” (5:14). This is remarkable! There must have been some type of tremendous evidence at hand to account for the fact that Jews in great numbers were coming to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, especially in light of the fact that the mark of a failed and illegitimate messiah was death at the hands of the enemies of the people of God.

This clearly points in the direction of the fact that there had been a Resurrection from the dead; and thus, though it was well known that Jesus had been condemned by both the Jewish authorities (for the blasphemy that accompanied His messianic claims) as well as the Roman authorities (for confessing Himself as a King and therefore as a rival to Caesar), and had been executed as a result of the sentence of condemnation passed by both parties, the Resurrection served as His vindication. The Resurrection demonstrated that God, by raising Him from the dead, had reversed the judicial decrees that had come down against Him.

The reasonable conclusion, therefore, was that since Jesus had openly confessed these things concerning His Messiah-ship and His King-ship, it was not a matter of Him being cleared from the guilt of the charges against Him. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the Resurrection proved that what He had said about Himself was true. It was the preaching of the Resurrection that brought about the belief in Jesus, as the disciples of Christ “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the Word of God courageously” (4:31b). The preaching of the Gospel---declaring that Jesus was the crucified and resurrected Messiah of Israel and Lord of the world---by the Holy Spirit, was and is the showing forth of the very power of God that gifts faith and brings belief.

The apostles were jailed for these claims. Previously, they had been warned “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (4:18b). Interestingly, we find that “the high priest rose up, and all those with him (that is, the religious party of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy. They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail” (5:17-18). There is a depth of detail here, in that the apostles were obviously preaching the Resurrection, and it was the Sadducees “who say there is no resurrection” (Matthew 22:23b), that had them jailed.

In stark contrast to their being placed in jail for preaching Jesus and His Resurrection (for without a Resurrection, His teaching did not matter, as He would have been just another failed messianic pretender in a long line of failed messianic hopefuls), “during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out, and said, ‘Go and stand in the temple courts and proclaim to the people all the words of this life’.” (5:19-20) They were specifically instructed to preach the words of this life, meaning, in all contextual probability, the fact that Jesus was alive. They were not instructed to go and tell people about living a “Christian life,” but to preach the Gospel, which is rooted and given its substance in the Resurrection of Jesus.